Wednesday, August 25, 2004

As the lines between showbiz and politics keep getting blurrier and blurrier, even Turner Classic Movies is weighing in, signing Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards to tape an introduction to a screening of "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

Because TCM is a cable network, it didn't have to give equal time to Sen. Edwards' rival Vice President Dick Cheney .

The Edwards-hosted presentation of "Dr. Strangelove" (1964), directed by Stanley Kubrick, lands on TCM at 10 p.m . Oct. 7. It's the first of four specials called "Party, Politics & the Movies," an umbrella series encompassing movies introduced by politicians at 10 every Thursday night during the rest of October.

On Oct. 14, Sen. John McCain makes some pointed remarks about contemporary America in his intro to another Kubrick movie "Paths of Glory" (1957). The "lesson" McCain takes from the movie is that a country like the U.S. has "an incredible obligation" to protect the lives of American soldiers. "The cause has to be just," he said. "The end has to be in sight. And there has to be a clear-cut strategy for that victory."

An unabashed Robin Williams fan, Sen. Joe Biden will host the Oct. 21 showing of "Dead Poets Society" (1989). The movie's celebration of independent thinkers is to Biden a metaphor for what's best in America.

Edwards likes the apocalyptic black comedy "Dr. Strangelove" because it drives home the thesis that, as his intro puts it, putting nuclear power and "this potential holocaust in the hands of human beings, no matter who they are, is an extraordinarily dangerous thing."